Mirelle Borra

The Netherlands

Mirelle Borra’s interest in urgent global subjects merges with her keen sense of aesthetic to create thought-provoking work. Using photography and video, she engages with social and political topics to re-frame these matters in new ways. Borra seeks to examine structures of representation through a transnational perspective while staying in constant dialog with the context from which the work is derived. Borra was born in the Netherlands, and after living in New York City for many years, she is currently based in Berlin.

Somewhere in Between

Somewhere in Between is one story in an interchanging world of migratory experiences. These particular migrating stories re-contextualize the past and give us insight to the present.

The video work reflects on the Indo diaspora after the decolonization of the Dutch East Indies (contemporay Indonesia). Hundreds of thousands of people of Eurasian heritage were forced to leave the country after the Bersiap period (the bloody separation between the Netherlands and its colony). The narration of the video conflates a number of comments left on online Indo community networks. Shaped like a stream of thoughts, Somewhere in Between highlights different aspects of the process to redefine identity and culture.

In this work, the artist invites you to pay special attention to the editing of the video.